Deploying the MafiEra Vote Tool locally

Requirements: Make sure to have both Python3 and pip3 installed on your computer, as well as git. I recommend using a Linux VM with Ubuntu if using Windows. If you're using Ubuntu, execute:

$ sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip git

Clone this repository and enter it using a command-line

Execute the following command to clone out this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/Fireblend/MafiEra-VoteTool.git

This will create a new directory called 'MafiEra-VoteTool' with this app's source code inside. Enter it (with the following 'cd' command) and follow the rest of this tutorial.

$ cd MafiEra-VoteTool

Install required Python Packages and run the app

It is recommended you use a virtual environment, but it is not required. Virtual Environments are independent groups of Python libraries, one for each project. Packages installed for one project will not affect other projects or the operating system’s packages. If you want to use a Virtual Environment, install the python3-venv package and activate the environment. If not, skip the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-venv
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ . venv/bin/activate

Now install the requirements for the app (they should be installed in the venv directory if you're using a virtual env, or on the Python install path if not):

$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Finally, run the built-in flask server:

$ python3 app.py

It should prompt you to visit http://127.0.0.1:5000/ where the tool should now be running. Enjoy!

Deploying the MafiEra Vote Tool to the cloud via Heroku

Sign up for Heroku

Heroku, being a Software as a Service (SaaS)-type of service, requires you to create an account and login before you can start using its computers. Don't worry, creating an account and running a simple app is free and doesn't require a credit card.

You can create an account at this URL: https://signup.heroku.com/dc

Clone this repository and enter it using a command-line

Download git, and execute the following command to clone out this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/Fireblend/MafiEra-VoteTool.git

This will create a new directory called 'MafiEra-VoteTool' with this app's source code inside. Enter it (with the following 'cd' command) and follow the rest of this tutorial.

$ cd Mafiera-VoteTool

Download the Heroku toolbelt

Heroku has a command-line "toolbelt" that we must download and install in order commands that will simplify our communication with the Heroku servers. The toolbelt can be downloaded at: https://toolbelt.heroku.com/

Authenticate with Heroku with heroku login

Installing the Heroku toolbelt will give you access to the heroku command which has several subcommands for interacting with the Heroku service.

The first command you need to run is heroku login, which will ask you to enter your login credentials so that every subsequent heroku command knows who you are:

(You will only have to do this once)

$ heroku login

Setting up our app's Git repo

This part will be a little confusing. Heroku deploys using git -- which is not to be confused with Github. (Hopefully, you have git installed at this point.)

Basically, this means before we can deploy to Heroku, we need to create a git repo in our app, add the files, and commit them. But we don't need to push them onto a Github repo if we don't want to.

In fact, for this basic app, don't bother making a Github repo. Just make a local git repo:

$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'first'

Creating a Heroku application

OK, now Heroku has all it needs to provision a server for our application.

Now we need to do two steps:

1. Tell Heroku to initialize an application via its create command.
2. Tell Heroku to deploy our application by pushing our code onto the Git repo hosted on Heroku.

Initializing a Heroku application

First, make sure you've successfully created a Git repo in your app folder. Running git status should, at the very least, not give you an error message telling you that you've yet to create a Git repo.

Then, run this command:

$ heroku create

The create subcommand sets up a URL that your application will live at, and a Git repo from which you'll be pushing your code to on deployment.

The heroku create command results in output that looks like this:

Creating app... ⬢ warm-scrubland-16039
https://warm-scrubland-16039.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/warm-scrubland-16039.git

That output tells us two things:

1. Our application can be visited at: https://boiling-journey-47934.herokuapp.com/
2. Heroku has git repo at the url https://git.heroku.com/boiling-journey-47934.git...In fact, the create command has helpfully set up a remote named heroku for us to push to.

Deploying our application code

OK, let's finally deploy our app. We tell Heroku that we want to deploy our currently committed code by doing a git push to heroku master:

$ git push heroku master

This should seem familiar to when you've pushed code to your Github account, but targeting origin master:

$ git push origin master

...but of course, we haven't actually created a Github git repo for our simple app...we've only created a local repo. And, by running heroku create, we also created a repo on Heroku...which we will now push to:

$ git push heroku master

And with that simple command, Heroku will go through the steps of taking our application code, installing the dependencies we specified in requirements.txt and runtime.txt, and then starting a webserver as specified in Procfile:

(this process takes a lot longer than simply pushing code onto Github to save)

After about 30 seconds, you'll get output telling you how to find your application on the web.

remote:        https://warm-scrubland-16039.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku
remote: 
remote: Verifying deploy.... done.
To https://git.heroku.com/warm-scrubland-16039.git
   1c6e386..b0e9510  master -> master

My app happens to be given the name warm-scrubland-16039, which means that it is now available at the following URL for the whole world:

https://warm-scrubland-16039.herokuapp.com/

And that's how you make your application available to the world.

Changing our application code

Altering the codebase of a Heroku-deployed app is not much different than how we've re-edited and saved code before, except that we have to run git push heroku master in order to update the application on the Heroku server -- Heroku's server doesn't have a mind-meld with our computer's hard drive, we have to notify it of our changes via a git push.

However, git push doesn't push anything until we've actually changed code -- and added and committed those changes via git add and git commit.

Give it a try. Change app.py. Then add/commit/push:

git add --all
git commit -m 'changes'
git push heroku master

Depending on how much you've altered the code base, the push/deploy process may take just as long as the initial install. But that's a reasonable price to pay for an easy process for updating an application that the entire world can access.

Managing your Heroku apps

If you plan on using Heroku to deploy your apps but not while not paying a monthly bill, you'll only be able to deploy one live app at a time.

To destroy an app, which will destroy the deployed version and the reserved URL -- but not your local code -- you can select your app via the Heroku web dashboard, then delete it via its configuration/settings menu.

Or, if you'd rather do it from the command-line with the Heroku toolbelt, use the apps:destroy subcommand:

$ heroku apps:destroy whatever-yourappnameis-99999